Garret Ellison | The Grand Rapids PressAdam Casari, 18, of Grand Rapids is the first Black Friday camper in line at Best Buy in Grand Rapids. He set up his tent on Monday at 6 p.m.

GRAND RAPIDS — The customer carrying a flat screen TV box walking out of the front door couldn’t help but ask what Adam Casari, sitting by a tent in the parking lot, was smoking.

Casari took a puff off the hookah next to him and told the man it was flavored tobacco called “shisha.”

“You can’t imagine the looks I get,” said Casari, 18, of Grand Rapids, camped steps away from the front door of Best Buy on the East Beltline.

In a scene being repeated this week nationwide, Casari’s was the first in a line of five tents outside the retailer on Wednesday afternoon, filled with bargain hunters hoping to cash-in on Black Friday deals.

Casari set up at 6 p.m. on Monday for a weeklong wait to nab a 42-inch Sharp HDTV that the electronic retailer is making available Thursday at midnight. Casari said the manager told him he was the earliest ever for the location by a good two days.

Near his chair was a case of bottled water and Playboy brand energy drinks, and a pair of McDonalds cheeseburgers. He was waiting on some friends to arrive Wednesday with a car battery, a TV and a Playstation 3 so they could play Call of Duty.

“Monday was the worst night,” he said. Casari started with a futon mattress and blankets inside the tent, but added a space heater on Tuesday after the temperature dipped just below freezing in the early hours.

Casari has budgeted $800 for the TV, a Playstation 3, a Sony camera — “a gift” — a Blu-ray player and a Nintendo Wii. “Just for my bedroom,” he said.

He works two part-time jobs and has had some friends rotate out for him while he goes to work.

He’s had a steady stream of pre-Thanksgiving shoppers say everything from he’s “crazy” to try and bribe him to buy for them, he said.

He knows camping for a week outside a big box store for the chance to buy electronics might look a little daft to some people, but he said comparable TVs to the one he’s got his eye on can go as high as $800.

“They way I look at it, I spend four days in the cold and I’m being paid $600,” he said. So, jest if you must, but “I’ll be watching a $200 TV on Friday."